356 RUSSIAN BALLADS

do nynesnego Igorja). The nucleus is an account of a raid executed
by Igor and his brother Vsevolod against the nomad Polovcy. Igor
is the poet's type of heroic valour; we would rather call it fool-
hardiness. He determines to carry out his raid despite unfavourable
omens. With his brother's help he advances to the Don and skir-
mishes on the banks of the Kajala. The Polovcy rally after their
discomfiture, completely surround the Russian forces, and rout
them despite Vsevolod's valiant efforts. Igor is taken prisoner, but
escapes before the poem closes. The language is picturesque and
vivid, as in the description of a storm at dawn which is the flight
of Polovcy arrows. Their leaders are Gza and Koncak, and they are
heathens; but the Russians, who are Christians of a sort, still
believe effectively in Stribog and DaM'bog and in Div, the wood-
demon. Round this nucleus there are apparently discordant ele-
ments. One is evidently an interpolation; it is a hymn in praise of
Svjatoslav of Kiev who actually defeated the Polovcy under their
leader Kobjak, and so is compared with Igor to his disadvantage.
Another passage is used to upbraid the Russian princes for their
disunion. There are paragraphs dealing with other campaigns
against the Polovcy, and laments for Igor and other rulers. Thanks
to these accretions as well as to the work of the first author, the
poem is strikingly wealthy in precise information about persons.
Vladimir I falls just outside the poets' view, but scores of his suc-
cessors are named, so that an elaborate genealogical table is needed
for the understanding of the references.

All this is very different from the style of the Kievite ballads.
In them all the history of Kiev is telescoped into the reign of a
single Vladimir, without our being able to say which he is of two
(one died in 1015, the other in 1125). His consort is Apraksja,
corresponding to the Eupraxia who fell into Batu's hands in 1237.
Igor's soldiers fight against the Polovcy, and there is not a whisper
of those Tatars of the Golden Horde who have completely taken the
place of the Polovcy in the 'byliny5. The geography of Igor's
Expedition is precise, and one can fix the frontier of the Kievite
kingdom a little to the east of the Sula, a tributary of the Dnepr;
but the 'byliny' have Kiev as an imaginary centre and the unlimited
steppes for a circumference. It is plainly to be inferred that
nothing corresponding to the extant ballads would have been
imaginable in the time of the author of Igor. Though, on his
testimony, the style of Bojan was different, and apparently (since